Coronary spasm and thrombosis associated with myocardial infarction in a patient with nearly normal coronary arteries.

A 37-year-old man presented with an evolving inferior myocardial infarction. Coronary angiography performed within 3 hours after the onset of the pain showed spasm of the right coronary artery and the presence of intracoronary thrombi. After resolution of spasm and the disappearance of thrombi, angiography revealed nearly normal coronary arteries. An ergonovine test was positive when the patient was not taking medication and became negative when he was taking diltiazem. The course was uncomplicated, and after 9 months the patient is free of angina.

Biometric study of the disc cup in open-angle glaucoma.

Stereoscopic and photogrammetric study of the disc cup in open-angle glaucoma reveals several morphological changes. The ovalisation of the cup, upwards, downwards or on the temporal side, appears early. It can be detected at the onset of the disease, even in the absence of visual field defects. It results in a localised thinning of the nervous rim, which is a characteristic sign of beginning glaucoma, but the depth of the cup is not increased even when perimetry already reveals important defects. The aim of this paper is to study, on the one hand, the morphological changes of the disc cup and on the other, the functional defects in open-angle glaucoma, and then to compare the results of the investigations.

[Critical flicker fusion frequency in psychopathology and psychopharmacology. Review of the literature]. / La fréquence critique de fusion visuelle en psychopathologie et en psychopharmacologie. Essai de synthèse de la littérature.

As far back as the second century, Ptolemy reported the apparent immobility of wheel radius at a certain speed. The psychophysical laws of this flicker fusion phenomenon related to the frequency of the light stimulus were established in 1834-1835 by the Englishman Talbot and by the Belgian Plateau, whose thesis in Liège is described as a landmark in the field. CFF is more a measurement of cortical arousal than of visual functions. In psychophysiology, CFF underwent periods of success and oblivion, at the mercy of researcher's enthusiasm or disappointment. At the turn of this century, Pierre Janet measured CFF in the laboratory of physiology of the Salpêtrière Hospital and demonstrated its decrease 'in hysteria, in states of depression, of lowered tension'. All reviewers of CFF literature have overlooked these observations, reported by Henri Piéron in the 'Melanges dedicated to Monsieur Pierre Janet'. When CFF falls into disgrace, it is because of the variability of its results, due to differences in apparatus and designs of the trials as well as the great number and the intrication of the variables which modify CFF thresholds, among them the nonsensory variables. When CFF is reappraised, as it has been the case in psychopharmacology in recent years, the reason is that it represents a brief, easy and economical measure of vigilance which, under certain conditions, seems to be also reliable, valid and sensitive. In the present monograph, the first in French on CFF, the authors try to analyze the most important contributions of the literature from the standpoint of the most relevant variables: characteristics of the stimulus (light intensity, wave form, wavelength, light-dark-ratio, diameter of the flickering point), test procedure (light vs. dark adaptation, visual angle, continuous vs. discontinuous presentation, monocular vs. binocular vision), influence of various physiological or psychological conditions (pupillary diameter, age, training, IQ; anxiety, depression, motivation etc.). The authors summarize the prerequisite for CFF to measure vigilance or aging in psychopharmacological research. The present Monograph is dedicated to the authors' 'Maîtres', who recently became Emeritus Professors, namely the ophthalmologist Roger Weekers, the pioneer of the clinical application of CFF in Belgium, and the psychiatrist Jean Bobon, who pioneered clinical psychopharmacology in Belgium.

[Very early deflections of the visual evoked response (author's transl)]. / Etude des déflexions très précoces du potentiel évoqué visuel (PEMV). Nouvelles observations sur l'évolution de la puissance de différents segments temporels du PEMV lors du calcul de la moyenne variable.

The authors confirm the presence of very early deflection (before the 20th msec. after the flash). They probably have their origin under the cortex. The curves showing the attenuation of the spontaneous activity during the summation and those illustrating the evolution of the variancy of the early portions of the VER are comparable. By contrast, the stability of the curves related to later fractions state problems about the often pretented independancy of spontaneous and evoked activities.

Studies on alternaria allergens. II. Presence of two related antigens with contrasting allergenic properties in Alternaria tenius extracts.

Earlier, it was reported that most of the allergenic activity of Alternaria tenuis seemed to reside in the last Sephadex G-100 fraction (G3, molecular weight approximately 20,000). These conclusions were based on results obtained by the in vitro techniques of radioallergosorbent tests (RAST) and RAST inhibition. In the present studies, the allergenic activity of A. tenuis fractions was measured in vivo. It was found that fraction G3 was neither capable of inducing reaginic (IgE) antibodies in rats nor eliciting a skin reaction in rats sensitized with reagins against A. tenuis non-dialyzable fraction (MW greater than 12,000). On the other hand, subfractions G2D3 and G2D4 obtained from the middle fraction of G-100 (G2, MW approximately 30,000-40,000) followed by ion-exchange chromatography on DEAE-cellulose, showed the greatest allergenic activity in vivo, giving high titered reaginic antibodies in rats. When compared by RAST inhibition, the activities of fractions G2D3 and G2D4 were slightly lower than that of G3. Fraction G3 was immunogenic in rabbits. In immunodiffusion tests, G2D3, G2D4 and G3 appeared to be identical and they were cross-inhibiting in RAST inhibition tests. It was concluded that the sizes and multivalent properties of G2 and G3 antigens exerted a strong influence on their allergenic activities in rats (IgE antibody production) but this factor was of little importance for their antigenic activity in rabbits (precipitin antibody production) and their behaviour in the in vitro tests.

Influence of pregnancy on the immune response to ragweed antigen in rats.

The reactivity of spleen lymphocytes in culture and the reaginic antibody (IgE) response to nondialyzable water-soluble ragweed (DWSR) extract were assessed at different intervals of pregnancy in rats. On day 6 of pregnancy, spleen cells showed a significant reduction in their mitogenic response to phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and slightly lowered response to concanavalin A (Con A) when compared to that of control nonpregnant rats. On day 11 of pregnancy, values obtained with PHA were slightly lower and those obtained with Con A similar to those of control rats. However, at day 18 of gestation, PHA values also returned to normal levels. In contrast, IgE antibody response to DWSR from day 4 to 9 of pregnancy was either slightly enhanced or similar to that of control rats and significantly suppressed from day 11 to 18 of gestation. The decline in humoral response to DWSR during late pregnancy is discussed in the text.

Induction of reaginic (IgE) gonococcal antibodies in the rat by a common antigen of Neisseria gonorrhoeae.

An antigen (ZAB) common to Neisseria gonorrhoeae was prepared by stepwise elution of a crude gonococcal antigen (ZA) from columns of diethylaminoethyl cellulose employing 0.02 M phosphate buffers, pH 7.6, containing increasing concentrations of sodium chloride. Rats immunized with ZAB produced reaginic (IgE) antibody which cross-reacted with ZA prepared from eight gonococcal strains by the passive cutaneous anaphylaxis (PCA) test. Heating of the sera at 56 degrees C for 4 h destroyed the PCA activity. The PCA activity of the anti-ZAB rat serum was removed after absorption with ZAB antigen or with rabbit anti-rat IgE but not after absorption with gonococcal lipopolysaccharide or with heat-killed or formalinized gonococci. Treatment of ZAB with trypsin or heating at 100 degrees C for 30 min destroyed or reduced the antigenic activity respectively. Further purification of ZAB by filtration through Sephadex G-100 gave a preparation (ZAB2) which contained the common antigen as shown by the cross-reactivity of anti-ZAB2 rat serum with seven stains of N. gonorrhoeae. Fraction ZAB2 contained material which had a molecular weight less than 13,700 and was associated with the presence of material absorbing at 260 nm. The results of this study indicate that a low molecular weight antigen, which appears to be protein in nature and associated with nuclei acid, is common to the gonococcus and is the main antigenic component inducing reaginic (IgE) antibody in the rat.

Preferential synthesis of IgE reaginic antibodies in rats immunized with alum-adsorbed antigens.

The reaginic antibody response to alum-precipitated ovalbumin (OA) and the dialyzed water-soluble extracts of ragweed (DWSR) and Alternaria tenuis (DWST) in several strains of rats appeared to be wholly an IgE response. There was no evidence of a heat-stable (IgGa) antibody to OA, DWSR and DWST in the sera of the rats immunized with these antigens suspended in alum. Wistar-Furth and Lew inbred and hooded outbred rats produced comparable amounts of reaginic antibody after immunization with DWST, but BN inbred rats failed to generate a reaginic response to this antigen. The amount of antigen-induced histamine release from rat peritoneal mast cells did not always correlate with the level of circulating IgE-specific antibody.